6th Sunday of Easter, A May 10, 2026
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
“He is going to marry that girl.” It sometimes happens that a parent says this about their child’s newest love interest without even meeting the love interest in question. Friends sometimes do the same thing. It’s what I said about my friend Adam when he first described his then-new-girlfriend to me, even though I never met her. And marry her he did. I didn’t know her but I got to know her through his love of her. I think that’s a fitting analogy for prophecy, actually. A prophet is someone who reveals God to others by the way they love God.
Now, God is truth, God is love, God is just, God is holy… so a prophet could be someone who passionately reveals any one of those attributes. Jonah from the Old Testament is a prophet not because he’s compassionate, but because he’s unyielding in what he knows to be true: which is that God hates sin. Many a prophet is a man or woman who radically seeks justice and boldly speaks truth.
People typically think “prophecy” is a prediction of the future. That’s not wrong – a lot of what Jesus did depended on fulfilling prophecies from 100s or 1000s of years before – but it’s also not all that prophecy means. A prophet is someone who speaks the truth, whether that’s future truth or present truth. It’s the reason so many prophets wind up murdered; because they boldly spoke a present truth that no one wanted to hear. Prophecy is both fore-telling and forth-telling. Prophets can see something about God that others don’t, but because they love God, they can reveal that aspect of God to others just as my friend’s love revealed something about his future wife to me.
Now, the reason I’m talking about prophecy is to fulfill a promise from last week, when I said I’d preach a three part series on what it means to “believe in” Jesus and therefore “do the works” that he did. As Jesus puts it today, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” His commandment is love, but because love is an ambiguous word, I listed three categories for the way Jesus loved: priestly, prophetic, and kingly. Last week was the priestly, today is the prophetic, and next week we’ll use the feast of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven to look at the kingly.
For prophecy, we have St. Peter’s teaching the second reading: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” In other words, love Jesus Christ in such a way that others can see it and maybe even ask you about it. Then, like my love-struck friend who hoped to marry that woman, be ready to tell people how your love of Jesus gives you hope for marriage… for heavenly union with God.
Baptism makes you priest, prophet, and king. Though you might not offer mystical predictions of the future, your baptism makes you a prophet of Jesus Christ. We used “pay, pray, and obey” to unpack your baptismal priesthood. For your baptismal prophethood, let’s use “words, wonders, and woes.” Prophecy involves speaking the truth with our words, but it also comes through the joy we express in our wonder and our patient endurance in times of woe and suffering.
Let’s start with wonders. Wonder includes the miracles we see from Philip in the first reading. Most people think they can’t do miracles, which is precisely why they can’t. There’s a real prophetic power that comes from trusting deeply in the supernatural power of faith. When we step out in trust, when we pray deeply, when we take risks for the sake of Jesus Christ, miracles can happen and the wonder of those things can speak to about the God whom you love.
On a more mundane but truly more important level, wonder also refers to joy. Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. When the Church goes to canonize a saint, one of the things they look for is joy. You… you can be prophetic by cultivating your spiritual joy! How? Gratitude. Praise and thank God often and you will become more prophetically joyful. Also, it’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit so, you know, get you more Holy Spirit! Practice prioritizing prayer and the sacraments and sacrificial acts of charity and you’ll become holier and more joyful and therefore, more prophetic. Many a convert has said that the only reason they converted was the wonder and joy of Catholics around them.
Now for the words. Y’all, there’s no way around it, you have to become comfortable talking about Jesus. If it makes you uncomfortable, do it anyway. Start with the least difficult situation: fellow believers and close friends. Then work your way up to coworkers and strangers. Even the willingness to pray grace in public is a starting point. Offering to pray for people is a starting point. But it’s not an ending point.
Not everyone can or should try to be a theologian or apologist, but every believer should “be ready to give an explanation” for your hope as St. Peter puts it, and do it “with gentleness and reverence.” Going online to “destroy” people is not what we’re talking about. But even learning to give simple explanations for creation or salvation or even how you came to know Jesus and why you trust the Church can go a long way.
There’s also your willingness to speak any truth that needs to be spoken. Something being true is not an excuse to gossip about or belittle people, but we must overcome cowardice in the face of difficult truth. A rule of thumb: if the truth hurts me, I should probably face it. If it hurts others, I should makes sure it’s medicinal pain first. Our willingness to speak a difficult truth with love, to say something because we love the person more than their opinion of me is part of our prophetic calling. Practice with slightly uncomfortable truths first, but at some point, we should refuse to play the world’s game of hiding from the truth… especially when the truth costs us something.
That brings us to the third kind of prophecy: woe. St. Peter says “it is better to suffer for doing good” and reminds us of Christ’s suffering. Jesus Christ’s most perfect prophetic act is his crucifixion – he was killed for speaking the truth about God. When we suffer for any truth, we share in that prophetic love. Suffering is perhaps the most convincing prophecy because it tells those around you that what you see is just that good. When they can’t accuse you of using the gospel for your own advantage; that is when the Gospel is most convincing. It’s why we say “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
This is actually good news. Why? Because it means that when you try convince someone of the gospel and they reject you, you didn’t fail. It might look like it failed, but if it causes you to suffer, you can look at the suffering and take comfort in the fact that suffering is a success. You may not see how that grace bears fruit, but you can be certain that doing prophecy like Jesus did – suffering for the truth – is doing it right. Be sure you’re suffering for the truth and not for being a jerk in how you speak truth. Suffering for being a jerk is still good – you need penance for sin – but to be prophetic is to suffer for the truth spoken with love.
And what is the love-grounded truth worth suffering for? Like that little natural prophecy of “he’s going to marry that girl,” it’s the realization that “he’s got God in him,” seen by word, wonder, and woe. God loves you so much he wants to be in you and have you in him. He’s revealed himself to you in scripture and tradition, he dwells in your soul by baptism and confirmation, and he has fed you with his body and blood. You’ve got plenty to prophesy about. So, “let all the earth cry out to God with joy” starting with you! Prophesy by word, bear witness by wonder, proclaim by even your woes that Jesus Christ is alive, that he is here and here, and that what he wants most is our everlasting joy.
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